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Economic Times’ Sanjay Sindhwani is new digital CEO of Indian Express
MUMBAI: Indian Express Online Media Services, the digital arm of The Indian Express Group, has appointed Sanjay Sindhwani as its CEO. Sindhwani comes from The Economic Times, where he was VP-digital products and business head. He will report to group CEO George Varghese.
He replaces Durga Raghunath who had resigned last December.
The Indian Express Group executive editor Anant Goenka welcomed Sindhwani saying that he has known Sindhwani for close to three years and has also learned from him. In an email to the employees, Goenka wrote, “Sanjay joins us at the beginning of a year when public trust in the news media has hit an all-time low and when recognized news media brands are often being baited and are getting caught picking political sides.”
Sindhwani has spent 24 of his 25-year career in the Times Group, which he had joined after brief stints at Bradma of India and Usha India. He joined Bennett & Coleman as an investment analyst in 1994. In 1999 he became editor, product and brand head at Times Internet. Sindhwani is an electronics engineer from Nagpur University and did his MBA in finance from the Institute of Management Studies.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
